I've got your back, kiddo
by tyleroswald
Summary: Jessica's plans for Valentine's went south, so the new backup plan was to go home and do something sad. Maybe watch a movie with tons of ice cream? The cliché stuff. But Tony Stark had planned something to cheer her up and catch up with his daughter, since they haven't spent quality time in a while. The whole situation brought memories of her mother, and it's the first glimpse we g


" _Is that a Vermont?" The man pointed to the painting on his left, at the canvas hung up on the wall._

" _No, that's a-" Potts started to explain him, vainly._

" _I want one." He wasn't even looking to the red-haired that followed him closely, hurriedly taking notes as he interrupted her._

" _Actually, it's a Stafford-Hale." A blonde woman said, attracting Tony Stark's attention. She smiled and looked down as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "And I'm glad you liked it."_

" _Was that..." He pointed, his hand going from the painting to her. "you?"_

" _Stafford-Hale." She agreed by nodding with a smile, stretching her hand to him._

" _It's very beautiful." He affirmed, hands on his pockets, analyzing her over his sunglasses._

 _Her hand rested in the air, unresponded for a few seconds before she let out a soft snort and retreated her arm._

" _Well, thank you anyway, hm, Mister..." She laid the words out waiting for an answer._

" _Stark. Tony Stark. Call me Tony."_

" _Well, Tony, I assure you that was very wise purchase. You have a very good artistic taste, if I may point out."_

 _He took off his sunglasses in a quick movement. "I bet you're saying that to everyone here today."_

" _Nah. Just to the ones that bought one of my paintings." The woman shrugged with a smirk._

 _He let out a satisfied smile in response. "Okay so, can I buy you a drink too?" He took his hand off his pocket and pointed to her, resting it in the air as he waited for a response with quirked brows._

 _She put her hair behind her ear again and smiled, looking down for a couple of seconds, pondering his invitation. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen._

" _Or do all of your buyers buy you drinks around here too?" He asked, a few seconds after._

 _She tilted her head in response with a pout. "Not lately, no."_

" _So it's settled, great." He looked to his assistant. "Pep, reschedule my appointments... from tonight?" His gaze went to- he didn't ask her name yet, did he?_

" _Okay, but after the exposition closes." She added. "And since it's settled, you will have to excuse me now." The woman winked at him before walking down to a couple that approached another painting._

" _Did we catch her name?" He asked Pepper as they continued their walk in the gallery._

" _No, but I will in just a minute."_

I laid out the words and the phone was silent for a while. I couldn't but to frown. "Dad? You still there?"

Tick tock. No response.

"Daad?"

" _Yeah, sorry. I'm here. Hey, listen, you're not bringing anyone for a sleepover tonight, are you?"_ My father spoke from the other side of the call, causing me to narrow my eyes. I knew that tone on his voice. What was going on?

"No... Why?" My hand hovered the phone's speaker, and I looked to Happy at the driver's seat. "Hap, d'you know what my father is up to?"

He looked at me for one sec and then his eyes were back at the road again. His head nodded negatively. "All I know is that he's home for the night and I'll be off for dinner with my ma."

" _You know I usually don't listen when you tell me this kind of things, I'm just checking."_

Okay. Weird.

" _Y'know what? Nevermind. Forget this call, it never happened. Dad loves ya. See ya later, alligator."_

And with that, he hung up. I put the phone down slowly, staring at the road in front of us with a confused expression.

"What is it?" Happy enquired, curious.

"He's up to somethin'."

"Well, it's Valentine's day." The man shrugged.

"You never know."

I nodded in response, but my mind plotted theories for the rest of the journey back home. It was Valentine's indeed, but what was he preparing? I was a bit surprised he wasn't out on a date tonight. Well, as far as I knew he wasn't seeing someone lately. Not that it was trustworthy information - there were many things about his love life I didn't know. Or didn't even want to know. It was scary how quickly he could pick up the phone and come up with a date.

And soon enough the lighted house in Malibu's shore was in front of us. "We're home." Happy announced with a smile as he parked by the front door.

I opened the door and hopped out of the Audi V8. "Thanks, Hap. Have a nice dinner."

"Tell me what he's done later."

"Sure thing." I smiled and waved as he drove away before walking towards the mansion's front door. First thing I noticed was that the foyer and the corridor to the living room were in the dark. I opened the door walked among the shadows, finding a small light coming from a table nearby.

" _Welcome home, Ms. Stark."_ Jarvis greeted me when I reached the living room. Going towards the light source, a small cell phone that was just a piece of glass (tech developed at Stark which my father used regularly), it laid there on standby. It read:

" _Something came up and I had to leave for a couple of hours.  
There's a gift for you in the kitchen. I'm sorry. Happy Valentine's. _

_Dad."_

With the device still in hand, I let the words settle. Was he actually up to anything? Was this still part of his plan?

I sighed, put the device back where it was and threw my bag on the couch. "Jarvis, turn on the lights, please."

The place was immediately bright again, and I made my way back to the corridors and into the kitchen. The lights went on and off as I walked into a new place and left another. There were two boxes wrapped in blue paper resting on the kitchen table with a card next to them. I grabbed an apple on the way to the gifts and peaked inside the card.

" _Hope you like it. I didn't know which games you wanted,_

 _so I took a bunch I thought you might enjoy and another few_

 _I also wanted to play. Sorry that we couldn't play together at  
the workshop today. _

_Love ya, pumpkin._

 _T.S."_

Games? Cool. I used to spend a lot of time playing after school nowadays. Dad also played with me some nights when he was stressed or just wanting to chill. We already had a couple of consoles at home, so I wondered what kind of new thing that might be. Next, I unwrapped the boxes. One of them had a bunch of games inside and the other one - a PlayStation 3 box - where the console was supposed to be, it was empty.

The wrapping paper flew from the table due to the wind, causing me to notice an open door which leads to the outside part of the house, by the seaside, where I used to spend hours 'cloud gazing' on sunny days; feeling the sea breeze by the pool and imagining different pictures the clouds formed at the blue sky. The lights outside were on, so I followed them, stepping out with a frown. Did Dad come up with a plan?

The answer to my question came straight away: he did. Sitting at a table for two by candle lights and a rose decorating said table, there was Tony Stark, who instantly stood up by the time his eyes caught my presence. Standing close to him there was a PS3 in a small table. The house's wall was displaying the screen, projected by a small device resting on the top of the console. Dad was wearing a black shirt and jeans and welcomed me with opened arms and a hopeful smile.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" He said with a tone that seemed to mean 'I expect you to like this very much, look how much effort I've put into this shit.'

I grinned and walked closer, having a better look at the console and noticing it did look like a regular PS3, but from a distance. I realized now that the case was a bit different, the edges were rounder than usual. And instead of the PlayStation logo, it had a Stark Industries logo. Cool. Never thought of that before. "Thanks, Dad. Happy Valentine's." I looked at him and saw a couple of fast food bags over the table.

"I tried to make spaghetti, but I managed to burn the sauce so suddenly I was in a fast food mood. You still like hamburgers, right?" Tony quickly explained once my eyes arrived at the table.

"They are a bread n' meat shaped piece of heaven on Earth." I put the piece of wrapping paper I forgot it was still in my hand aside.

"So…?" He walked to the other side of the table and pushed the chair away from it so I could sit.

"So what?" I asked as I sat down. He kissed me in the head and rested his hand on my shoulder for a couple of seconds before taking his seat across the table from me.

"Did you like it?"

Did he really think I wouldn't like it? Or he just wanted a confirmation he did okay? " 'Course I did, Dad. Gotta say it wasn't how I thought the night would end up. It's a hell of a lot better than my expectations from the ride home."

"Oh yeah, Mark. Hey, don't worry about him. You deserve better." He opened the bag in front of him and took out a hamburger. "Do you want me to pay someone to beat his ass off?"

Ok, he knew about Mark? _Yay._

"Nah, it's fine." I shrugged with a sigh. "Was it Pepper or Happy?"

"Both. Pep mentioned you were busy tonight. I did my research. Then Happy told me you were coming home, so unless something went south or you were bringing him home, which…"

"Never gonna happen."

He nodded in agreement. "I'm glad you didn't get that from me."

I grabbed my hamburger as well. "Why did the notes say you were out tonight?"

"Oh, those were real for the time amount of five minutes. I planned this right before Rosie Huntington-Whiteley called me. But then I wasn't leaving you home alone tonight."

I rose my eyes to him with a caring smile. Affective and emotional demonstrations weren't usually that plain with dad, so actually, I was a bit surprised with his words.

"Because we all know what happens when you leave your children home alone. Four movies illustrated that."

I rolled my eyes, but let out a laugh. "Thanks for this then." The laugh reduced itself to a shy smile. "It's been a while since we last hung out together."

"That's on me, I guess. I'm sorry. Business has been crazy since, well, you know. It's difficult to keep up with many new things at once. Being the Iron guy takes a whole lot of time." He gesticulated with a sigh. "And now we're about to start preps for the Expo. D'you know there is a huge deficit on the clean energy field? Cordco is going to present a sonic fire extinguisher; they are now entering the testing phase to make sure it blasts out everything it needs too. I also need to gather all the subsidiaries in the same room to settle their pavilions and stuff." He stopped talking a blue streak to take a bite of his sandwich.

It was so nice to see him excited about work and creating new things. I knew the Expo was something he was looking forward to making it work, maybe because he wanted the world to look at Stark by its inventions as it once did and not just because he was now "Iron Man". By the way, I wasn't fully accustomed with that name yet. It was... so obvious. Well, the armor was made of a mixture of nitinol and carbon fiber, and Iron Man was still better than Tin Man. I prefer the last one, only to annoy my father. Anyhow, that's how people called him now. There are new nicknames to me that are popping out at school's corridors that have gotten to my ears, but nothing I really cared about.

But that glow on his eyes when he's talking about his stuff always gets me. Apart from out fights and the things I disliked about him, I always wished to have like, half of the creativity he has. And I know I have skipped years of college and stuff, and some people say that sometimes I'm just like him - yet I still feel there was so much I should be doing, you know? It's never enough. And that's something I'm actually working on with my psychologist.

"It's nice to see you all into helping the world now," I mentioned. "Very superhero-ish."

"Huh." He grinned. "I'm getting used to this word. People say it suits me." He shrugged. "I agree."

I shook my head and took a sip of soda. "How modest of you."

He looked at me and blinked a few times. His hands stood in mid-air holding his hamburger, the movement incomplete. His smile faltered and he frowned slightly. It lasted for the short amount of five seconds, yet long enough for me to notice.

"What?" I asked.

"What?"

"Dad, don't. I know you're thinking about something."

"Work. I just figured out what is wrong with the Stark HUD 2020's coding. It's basically the same logic we're using to finish this small robot with a USB plug: the idea is for it to look like a crab, but there have been designing problems when it walks."

"Yeah, except that I don't buy all your bullshit, you forgot that?" My face was serious. "Really Dad - what happened?"

He glanced at the sea for a bit and back to his plate as that hamburger was a lot interesting for some kind of reason. "When you spoke, you sounded... exactly like your mother."

"Oh."

Quickly all defenses I usually activate when my mother was mentioned were up. I was surprised and happy at the same time. My father had such melancholy at his eyes that I wanted to go to him and give him a big hug. But I was afraid that we would like to call it a night and ended up running down to his workshop.

And the thing that bothered me was that he was the only person who'd let me triggered by bringing my mom in the conversation. I've learned with time that she wasn't coming back, no matter how much I missed her. But I also knew I had Pepper, who looked after me during my whole life after the incident like I was her daughter. I learned that I could get a drop in maternal love from her.

But I also knew Tony never forgave himself for letting the incident happen. Days before, he and mom had a big fight and they didn't make peace before it all happened. I knew it haunted him even after all these years, and seeing him like that affected me too. Maybe because I knew he was the only other person who perhaps missed her as intensely as I do. So my approach to when he usually had that look was to ask about their good memories. It was a lottery sometimes, I mean, I couldn't have guessed they had a big fight at the top of the Eiffel Tower when I asked him once. But I usually hoped for the best.

"Did you two had like… any Valentine's day worth mentioning?"

The silence hovered in the air for a while after my question, and I felt like standing at a sharp razor's edge. Tony looked at me pondering my question. He finished his hamburger and started talking while grabbed a napkin. His voice was warm and his lips formed the trace of a smile.

"Well actually, we first met on Valentine's night," And he went on in response to my arched eyebrows. "I was at a gallery seeing some exposition that I can barely remember, and there was this painting that seemed really nice. So, I added it to the ones I intended to buy that night. And sometimes, the painters come to talk to the buyers if they see you're purchasing their work."

"She came to talk to you." I jumped ahead, smiling and letting my food rest, laying my total attention on his story.

"Sure did." He agreed, pointing at me. Then he put his fists on the table, leaning his body forward, excited with his storytelling. "And I was dazzled with that beautiful woman in front of me. Well, I was used to a certain level of beauty around me, you know. Even so, she was _belle_."

"Yeah, what happened then?"

"She happened. Emma was funny, charming, smart, and very much unimpressed. She had some kind of... pizzazz." He let out a laugh. "I took her to one of the finest restaurants of, hm, Toronto - if I remember correctly. We had a great night and shared some laughs and a few other things. Your mom had a natural know-it-all air when she spoke about art, and I could hear her for hours. And after that night we agreed on not seeing each other again."

"Okay, what the-?"

"It was my _modus operandi_ at the time. One night stands and all that. And it was a mutual decision. For a long time, I thought it was all we would ever have, and I was pretty much okay with that at the time."

"When did you meet again?"

"At 94's MET ball gala. And another event a couple of months later. After the third meeting, we decided to sit and talk about whatever was that we had. If we had something."

" _Tony, you hung my painting up just because I'm here? No need for that."_

" _No, it's been there a while now. Reminds me of you."_

" _Isn't it creepy to remember me when you were having sex with other people?"_

" _I haven't had any sex since I first met you."_

" _Oh yeah, sure thing."_

 _He held a serious expression for a few seconds, his face showing a mist of surprise ('Do you honestly believed I lied?') and someone who was trying to restrain a laugh. He took her hand on his and stared deep into the woman's eyes. It lasted for almost 5 seconds until he broke down and let out a smile, letting her hand go as well._

" _I can't hold it for too long. We've first met what, two months ago?"_

" _Eight."_

" _Yeah, that's what I said." He shrugged and stood at her side crossing his arms on his chest, facing Emma's painting on the wall. "It reminds me of you... so it calms me down."_

 _She looked at him and softly smiled, laying a kiss on his cheek._

" _Who'd have guessed that I needed calming down, right?" He crossed his arms in front of his chest._

" _I would. Many people would, in fact. You're not as invincible as you sell it, Tony. And it's alright."_

 _He looked at her, and his eyes dragged her attention. They were heavy, sad, and tired. As if it carried so much weight for so long and it never actually asked for help. Maybe he never had the time, or even never had the right person to do that._

" _Hey, don't worry. I won't tell anyone that. As far as I'm concerned, you're The Invincible Tony Stark."_

 _He shook his head with a weak, but sincere smile. "That's too cheesy for me."_

" _That's why you liked it." Emma teased and went towards the bottle of whiskey on the counter right below the TV._

 _He tilted his head in agreement and went after her, kissing her neck and resting one hand at her waist. The other hand laid right on the top of hers, and he pushed her hand with the bottle back to the counter._

" _Let's not drink tonight. I wanna remember this tomorrow morning."_

Tony took a deep breath and grabbed his plate, standing up. He had a relaxed smile on his face, the type of smile I haven't seen on him for a little while. A good memory, perhaps?

"Anyhow, we have dessert!" He walked to the kitchen.

I finished my burger and then turned my attention back to the console standing there. The outside differences were easy to spot in plain sight, but probably it wasn't the only difference from the original PS3. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a present from my dad, right?

"Guess what?" He came back with two bowls of ice cream covered with chocolate topping.

"Oh Gosh, you wanna make me fat," I whined. "That's why I have such a lame love life."

"First, cut the bullshit. Second, you're not even close to getting fat, and third, it's not gonna take an ice cream bowl to get you there. Jarvis, back me up, pal."

"In a quick scan of Ms. Stark's body, the result indicates she's very healthy. Her HDL and LDL levels are 50 and 72, respectively. The total cholesterol level is 160. Although a certain attention should be directed to her high cortisol levels, which is most likely a symptom of anxiety and stress. But, overall, you're as healthy as you should be, Miss."

"Thanks, bud. And last but not least, Mark is an asshole, honey. Don't let him get to you." He put one bowl at the table and gesticulated towards me. "Come on. It's Ice Cream Paradise. Also, I think it's worth mentioning that if you were fat you would still be beautiful anyways."

Okay, I couldn't say no to Ice Cream Paradise. It was just the best freaking ice cream in the whole West Coast of America. Actually, thinking it through, I could say the whole country. If I ever get to refuse it, write my words - something is wrong with me. And I deserved something sweet after being dumped on Valentine's Day, come on.

"What's up with the console there, by the way?"

"That? Nothing. Just a regular PS3." He had his mouth filled his ice cream.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"I can't do nothing if you don't believe me." He shrugged.

"Okay, what's up with its _hardware?_ "

"Now that's the real question," He flashed a smile. "I threw away its GPU-RSX and put a new one with a floating-point performance of 2 teraFLOPs. I also miniaturized the holographic system we commonly use here and at Stark, so it would analyze the game's controls system and we could use a hologram image of its weapons or sorts instead of a joystick to play the game."

"Wow, nice. Very nice. But it doesn't sound like something Sony would like to commercialize, honestly. How much would its price have to be?"

"They said the same thing, in fact. Instead, we're helping them with their new PS4, the idea is to come up with an APU, where the CPU, GPU, and memory controllers will be all on the same die." He explained.

"It doesn't seem like a complicated job worth the Stark's time."

"It's not. But having a contract with PlayStation is."

"Hmm." I nodded. "Makes sense." I finally grabbed the spoon and ate the first spoonful of the ice cream. My eyes closed and I let out a moan of pure happiness.

Dad grinned. "It's still a mystery to me why do you love so much this specific ice cream. We've had one of the best gelatos in the world when in Venice."

"You don't need to understand. Just accept it. There are things in life we can't understand."

"Hey," he pointed his spoon at me. "d'you know what _you_ should accept?"

I raised a brow at him.

"That you re about to lose on Guitar Hero. _Again._ " Tony stood up and went to the console, turning it on and using the holographic display it appeared in front of him to access the game area.

I took one last spoonful of ice cream and ran to his side, looking up to him to learn about how the new control system worked.

"Guitar or drums?"

"Drums." A holographic drumset appeared in front of me as the huge projection of the game screen was set at the house's wall.

"After I beat you on this, I want a rematch on CoD."

"Honey, I play Call of Duty in real life now. You'll _never_ beat me again. Wait- what did you say just now? Oh yeah, just _accept it_."

I rolled my eyes to him with a smile, and he smiled back. With the sea behind us and a soft breeze, I bet that almost half of the Malibu coast heard us playing rock songs for a few hours. And I tell you, it was one of the best Valentine's nights I have ever had.


End file.
